HowExpert - How To Coach Youth Football

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How To Coach Youth Football

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Table of Contents

This book is about coaching youth football. Teaching football to young players is a challenge unlike that of coaching at higher levels, such as high school or college. Your players will appear wide-eyed and eager, but in most cases, without even the slightest real knowledge of the game. They only know what they have seen on television. They will not know how to hit, how to run, how to throw properly. You literally have to teach every step of the game. You also have to teach the ethos of the game. They do not understand how to harness and use their enthusiasm, or to play a violent game without acting beastly. You are their gateway to this great game. What, and how, you teach them will stay with them forever.

As big as the challenge is, there is really no reward quite like watching young players master the skills and concepts that you teach them. The Patriots and the Steelers can keep their Super Bowl rings. Watching a 12 or 13-year old make a tackle to win a city championship game, or score the touchdown that wins a middle school conference title is truly priceless. Your players wont be looking around for their agents, or the next contract, what you see when they make a play, or win a game or championship, is pure unadulterated joy. No feeling is better than knowing you helped them be the best that they can be, and helped them find that joy.

Coaching youth football can be one of the most rewarding experiences of a lifetime when done correctly, one of the most frustrating and infuriating if done incorrectly. All too often, we read of parents losing control, of coaches attacking officials, of parents attacking coaches. The game should not, and does not, have to be this way. What we dont see are the thousands of coaches who teach the game the right way, day in and day out, year after year, sending their players on to rewarding and fulfilling high school, college, and pro careers. Perhaps more than any other sport, football requires coaching the whole individual; there is an emphasis on building character, teamwork, and leadership. In comparison to other sports, football seasons are short, so you dont have to wait to find out if you are a success or failure. Playing only once a week, you devote hours and hours of practice for one shot at a win, unlike other sports where teams may play two or three times a week.

Another major difference between football and other team sports is the degree of teamwork that must be inculcated if you are to succeed. Of course, building camaraderie and a sense of team is important in basketball, baseball, or softball, but when all else breaks down, one player can take over and lift the team. A guard or forward can shoot your team to a win in basketball; a pitcher or hitter can do the same in baseball or softball. Not so in football, everyone must work together to win a football game. Running backs cant run without blocking, quarterbacks cant throw touchdowns without receivers, there are no sacks without coverage, and linebackers cant chase down plays without defensive linemen helping. You must be a team, not a collection of talent, to be a successful football program.

This is the dual nature of football. It is as much about how you coach players as it is about what you coach them. If you cannot instill the discipline, teamwork, and fundamentals that are necessary for success, then it doesnt matter what offense or defense you employ. Similarly, you can have a cohesive, talented unit, but if you dont have a way to maximize that talent, then you will lose more than you win. In order to win consistently, you must set high expectations, invest yourself in teaching the game, and translate your players desire to play into a desire to work together to win. There is no magic formula, but there is a framework that, with plenty of hard work on your part, will yield a successful team with successful players:

1. Establish an Expectation of Success,
2. Practice for Perfection,
3. Teach Fundamentals Relentlessly, and
4. Fit your plays to your players.

I know this because I have lived it. The nature of youth football is fluid. Your players move on after two or three years. Because of the movement inherent in middle school and junior high school teaching, coaches rarely stay in one place for long. In our 15-member conference, only a handful of coaches have been at their school for more than four or five years, and only one has been in place for more than a decade. In the past five years, I have twice moved to new schools. In both cases, their football programs were county and conference doormats that rarely won more than one or two games per year. One had not challenged for a conference title in a decade, and the other had never challenged for a title. We compiled an overall 28-9 record at the two schools, winning a conference championship at a school that had never challenged, and finishing in the top three every year.